Chapter 1
“Let’s frack like there’s no tomorrow,” Burl Slocum proclaimed, raising his glass amid a burst of spirited applause. “And drink a toast to the future prosperity of our beloved hometown, Coon Creek.”
“Thanks to you, Mister Mayor, we’re all a bunch of mother frackers,” Boog Tuttle joked, eliciting jovial guffaws and har-de-har-hars from his fellows in the Drink Here Tavern.
For the first time since Burl could recall, the mood at the Drink Here was genuinely festive. In recent years, its clientele was the tears-in-their-beers, drinking-to-forget crowd of old timers saddened by the dying town Coon Creek had become and a younger generation of bored, angry rowdies looking for somebody to blame for it. This multigenerational blend of dour melancholy and fiery resentment permeated the Drink Here like the black exhaust from an engine burning oil. It smacked you in the face as soon as you entered.
But not on that night! Despite all the troubles Coon Creek had endured since the old Hercules Steel Mill closed, townsfolk were ecstatic that, finally, their communal prospects were looking brighter. Fracking would be Coon Creek’s salvation.
Burl basked in the glory of the people’s love, the likes of which he hadn’t felt since his gridiron days when he was honorable-mention all-conference linebacker for the Coon Creek High School Raging Coons. The adulation was well worth the cost of buying drinks for the house. Even though he’d been elected in a landslide, it still hadn’t quite hit Burl that he was the mayor. He could get used to being idolized, though.
At first, Burl didn’t want the job; he was a businessman, not a politician. If things had gone according to plan, his handpicked candidate, the Reverend Hiram Belvedere, would have won the election and spared him the trouble. Having a puppet in town hall who owed him favors seemed preferable and a lot less work than actually being in charge.
But that fool preacher couldn’t keep his pants zipped. Of all people, he made unwelcome sexual advances toward Faye Pfeiffer, the town’s mortician, on the altar of his own church no less. Belvedere’s mayoral candidacy might have survived the sexual scandal—he was a widower and, well, he had needs—but after the incident, Faye came out as a lesbian, and the rumor spread that his ineptly attempted seduction had turned her. The reverend became the butt of crude jokes in the tavern, and once he lost the support of the drinking men of Coon Creek, his credibility was shot. So, begging the Lord’s forgiveness, he tearfully withdrew from the race. Burl felt he had no choice but to step up and accept the nomination. As the Republican candidate in blood-red MAGA country, he figured he was a shoo-in to win. He just didn’t know what to do afterward.
Meanwhile, Reverend Belvedere became somewhat of an embarrassment to Burl. His often-tipsy sermons took on a fire and brimstone quality. “Fear God, lest He smite you with unholy revenge!” he railed at his parishioners. The more he promulgated eternal woe and misery upon sinners, the fewer people showed up for church on Sundays. Instead of tempering his righteous indignation, though, Belvedere took it as a sign God was steering him toward a new calling. Against Burl’s advice, he enrolled in mortuary sciences classes at the technical college and soon thereafter opened a rival, albeit unlicensed funeral home called Meet Jesus Heavenly Passages. So far, business hadn’t been great. It irritated Burl that so many Christians in Coon Creek still turned to a heathen Sapphist like Faye Pfieffer for the care and disposition of their dead, but Belvedere admonished him to “have faith.”
Oh, he did have faith—in Belvedere’s incompetence. Burl had bribed Belvedere to stay away from the celebration in the Drink Here by giving him a bottle of Old Crow bourbon, on the condition he drink it alone, at home.
When the roar in the tavern died down, Burl turned to face the elegant woman standing next to him. She wore CEO casual attire, with fitted navy slacks, a white button-down blouse, a dark gray blazer, flat, leather loafers, and a baseball cap bearing the Dig Deeper Drilling Company’s logo of a drill bit with a glinting, diamond point. Hot damn, she was a fine-looking woman. While introducing her, Burl mentally undressed her.
“And I would be remiss if I didn’t thank Ms. Ruby Fleet, CEO of Dig Deeper Drilling, Ohio’s largest producer of shale oil, for all the jobs her company is bringing to our community.”
Calls erupted from the crowd, “whoo-hoo,” “hooray,” “yahoo,” and “fuckin’ A.”
“Thank you for your wonderful hospitality. I couldn’t ask for finer partners than you all,” Ruby hailed, raising a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon over her head.
“Ain’t no tree-hugging hippies what lives here,” Boog shouted.
“Yes, well—you’re my kind of people in Coon Creek, for sure. Together, we are doing America’s work.”
Zeke Tuttle elbowed his son, Boog, and slurred, “Ya ought ta ask her out.”
“Shh, old man. She’ll hear you.”
Burl heard him, so he supposed that Ruby did, too. If so, she gracefully ignored the exchange and took a big gulp of her PBR. Burl expected that Boog, one of the town’s many tattoo artists, had enough sense to know that Ruby Fleet was way out of his league. If any man in Coon Creek had half a chance with a woman like her, Burl figured it was him.
Ruby continued, “As I’m sure you know, it was a contentious process, but today I’m pleased to tell you that the Ohio Department of Natural Resources has approved permits for fracking on public lands in the Coon Creek basin and the eastern flanks of the Shawnee Knob hills.”
Burl jumped in, “And that means jobs, jobs, jobs for you all.”
The cheers and applause that greeted this announcement sounded like happy, hoedown music to Burl. He hadn’t expected any dissent, but you never knew—some enviro-freaks from Golden Springs, the college town on the other side of Clifton Gorge, could’ve infiltrated their celebration with malicious intent.
Citizens of Coon Creek, however, were unified in their support of fracking. They weren’t in the least concerned about potential methane leaks, lousy air quality, carcinogens in the drinking water, or even the occasional earthquake. Their attitude was that, thanks to the now-mothballed Hercules Steel Mill, which in its heyday employed half the town, Coon Creek was already one of the most polluted places in the state. What more harm could a little fracking do? Coon Creekers bragged that they were well adapted to living with toxic waste. Furthermore, if you asked most anybody—and Burl did—they’d tell you that they’d gladly accept the risks in exchange for living wage jobs.
Zeke Tuttle, who’d worked at Hercules for thirty years before it shut down, and who was now rather proud of his enlarged prostate, summed it up. “Any job worth having’ll kill ya sooner or later.”
When the ruckus subsided, Burl invited Ruby to sit with him in the booth where he’d strung yellow police tape to reserve for them. It was the best booth in the Drink Here, the only one with vinyl seats that were uncracked and a table that didn’t wobble when you placed a full pitcher of beer on it. As Ruby lowered herself into the seat, the cell phone in her blazer pocket slipped out and fell onto the tile floor. Ruby bent to retrieve it, giving Burl an up-close view of her toned butt and thong panty line. He indulged himself to suppose that she was teasing him, which in his mind excused him to leer.
Ruby glanced over her shoulder and caught him gawking before he could look away. Burl’s face froze, but he hid behind his brand-new pencil-thin mustache, which he’d grown intending to look less like a backwoods hizzoner and more, well, debonair. She blinked. Or was that—possibly, hopefully—a suggestive wink?
Scooting into the booth across from Burl, Ruby pushed her bottle of PBR to the far edge of the table. “I can’t drink any more of that swill,” she said. “Can a lady get a dry martini in this joint?”
“Of course,” Burl said. “Let me buy you one.”
Burl had no idea what went into a dry martini, and he was fairly sure nary a soul had ordered one in the forty-odd years the Drink Here Tavern had been in business. Its clientele favored beer and straight shots. Wally Carmichael, the bartender, stocked red wine for ladies’ night when the gals in the Knock ‘em Down bowling league cut loose. Maybe he could improvise something. All else failing, the liquor store was right across the street, and it delivered. One way or the other, Ms. Ruby Fleet would get her dry martini. Come to think of it, Burl considered that he might like to try one, too. Coon Creek was moving up in the world. So was he. It was time to start acting like it.
Boog’s singing threshold was five beers—or four if he’d front-loaded with a hidden snort of cocaine in the restroom stall. That’s what it took for him to achieve the happy medium of mirth and bravado necessary to believe that people appreciated his singing. The tune that he liked to sing most—his personal theme song—was “Friends in Low Places.”
Yes, he did indeed have those.
Boog was a galoot and proud of it. The Coon Creek Galloping Galoots originated as a fantasy football league that gathered at the tavern to imbibe and watch games on weekends. During the off-season, they gathered just to imbibe. Membership in the Galoots was open to any male resident of Coon Creek old enough to drink, but active participation varied depending on such factors as whose current legal status prohibited him from drinking or whose wife or girlfriend wasn’t threatening to leave him if he didn’t stop drinking. Boog’s own drinking status had been in jeopardy a few years back, but things sorted themselves out when he got a divorce. He preferred the company of the Galoots to hers, anyway.
The core of the group consisted of Boog and four other upstanding Galoots, all proud armed forces veterans. Buzz Pringle was a farmhand who worked knee-deep in cow shit every day. The saddest part of that job was that he was an employee on what was previously his own family’s farm, until the bank foreclosed and sold it at an auction to Consolidated Hay and Hogs. Paddy O’Brien used to teach wood shop at Coon Creek High School but suffered an unfortunate table saw accident resulting in the loss of the index and middle fingers on his pool cue bridge hand. Red Ryan, accompanied everywhere by his lazy service dog, Foxtrot, hadn’t worked a real job since getting back from Afghanistan, although whenever somebody in town needed a septic tank pumped or crawl space cleaned, he was their go-to guy. Tank Turner was a native Coon Creeker who now lived and worked in Columbus as a bouncer at the Booti Tooti Gentlemen’s Club, but he kept a sleeping bag rolled up in the back room of the Drink Here Tavern.
Other men came and went from the Galoot fraternity, including lately the disgraced Reverend Hiram Belvedere. At first the Galoots were loath to accept a man of God as one of theirs, but it turned out the preacher had one unexpected but useful skill—he could drink most men under the table. He helped them win the coveted Greene County Gulp drinking contest against the hated teams from Cedarville, Wilberforce, and New Jasper, so they kept him around.
Boog was the recognized Galoot leader. No one dared challenge his authority, in part because he was the arm-wrestling champion of the Drink Here, but also because, as their favorite local tattoo artist, he knew things about them they preferred to keep secret.
The Galoots joined in with Boog singing about their friends in low places, then broke into convivial laughter and congratulatory backslapping.
“You shitheads sure do sing pretty,” Boog complimented them.
“Maybe a little less loud next time, though,” somebody behind Boog said.
“Who in the fuck?” Boog blurted, then turned to see Burl standing at the bar, while waiting for Wally the bartender to mix a drink. “Oh, sorry, Mister Mayor. I thought you was some wiseass music critic.”
“Listen, Boog, you know I don’t mind you boys having your fun, not one bit. But remember that we have a classy lady and possibly your future boss here today, so it’s best not to act like a bunch of drunken gorillas in her presence.”
“Will do, Mister Mayor. I’ll keep them Galoots in line. We surely don’t want to offend Ms. Ruby Fleet. She’s a really fine piece of ass.”
Burl wagged his finger at Boog. “Watch yourself. Not every woman would see that as a compliment.”
Wally interrupted, “Excuse me, fellas. But hey, Boog, have y’all got any liquor in yer pocket flask? I need some gin or vodka to mix up a martini for that dame Fleet.”
“That’s Ms. Fleet,” Burl corrected him.
Boog handed his flask to Wally. “It’s grain alcohol. Is that close enough?”
“That might could do,” Wally said. “It’s worth a shot.”
“I’m not so sure...” Burl started to say.
At once, every conversation in the Drink Here Tavern aborted midsentence. A wiry old man with a frazzled beard that seemed to grow up from his chest rather than out of his face entered the bar. Clad in a tattered plaid flannel shirt, wool trousers with a rope belt, and rubber tire treads strapped to his feet with duct tape, he kicked open the door and proclaimed, “God was right!”
This declaration startled the bar crowd into momentary silence. The first to recover was Boog, who called out, “Well, c’mon in, Old Man Appleseed. The last I heard, you were dead.”
“God ain’t done with me yet,” he answered.
Nobody had seen the old man claiming to be Johnny Appleseed since the Raging Coons’ homecoming game back in 2021, when he interrupted play by scampering onto the field and making an impressive open field tackle of the opposition’s kick returner en route to what would have been that team’s eighth touchdown of the first half.
“I cain’t take no more,” he’d shouted, in reference to the Raging Coon’s 49-0 deficit. For this, the home crowd heartily applauded him. Unfortunately, the action earned his team a penalty and only postponed the opposition’s ensuing touchdown by one play.
Appleseed was a hermit. Although nobody believed his claim that he was the same, 250-year-old Johnny Appleseed of early American mythology, his lifestyle and personality were similarly eccentric, and folks loved telling stories about him. Parents intimidated misbehaving children by telling them he was the boogie man who would kidnap them to be his cow-milking slaves if they didn’t finish their vegetables. He lived somewhere in the state forests on the eastern side of Clifton Gorge in the Shawnee Knob foothills. There were several theories about his identity, but consensus held that he was Ike Lentz, who wasn’t right in the head after he got back from Desert Storm and was last known to be a resident of the Appalachian Psychiatric Hospital.
Boog kind of liked Appleseed. He’d run into him once when he was a kid and snuck into the woods to shoot off his old man’s Smith & Wesson revolver. Appleseed crept up behind him and said, “Shoot at the devil, but not at any other of God’s creatures.” Startled, Boog maintained he was just shooting at a tree, even though his real target was a squirrel in that tree. Years later, in between tours of duty in Afghanistan, Boog took to wandering off deep into the woods for no other reason than to be alone, and one day he stumbled on Appleseed tending a hidden marijuana crop in Lost Dog Hollows.
“I’ll let you sample from my garden, if’n you don’t tell no one,” he’d said. Boog had thought that was more than fair, so he had helped himself, more than once.
Appleseed stood in the doorway of the Drink Here and trumpeted, “Satan would feel right at home among this sorry pigsty full of y’all drunken horndog sinners.”
“We ain’t that bad,” Boog disagreed. “Let me buy you a beer.”
Appleseed pointed his finger at Ms. Ruby Fleet.
“I’ll take my revenge in green blood from any person what defiles God’s creation,” he pronounced, then removed a chalk rock from his pocket and drew an “X” on the Drink Here Tavern’s door. “Y’all done been warned.”
Appleseed backed out the door.
Boog followed him out of the bar, hoping to persuade him to come back, chill out, and have a drink. But he was gone, vanished into thin air. When he returned, folks were still buzzing about what Appleseed had meant and might do. What had he meant—they’d been warned?
Still, Boog was glad that, despite reports to the contrary, Johnny Appleseed wasn’t dead after all.
